Does Starfield have New Game Plus? Your options after the ending explained

Time to start again.

By Toby Saunders

Published: Monday, 18 September 2023 at 11:20 AM

Now Starfield has been out for a little while, you’ll have nearly completed its main story missions and will be wondering if there’s anything left to do once you complete the game. Is there a Starfield New Game Plus mode or not?

While many games nowadays have a New Game Plus mode included, it’s not an industry standard that you’ll see across everything, so it’s always worth asking the question. No other Bethesda game has had one before, either.

In a massive open-world game such as this, too, it’s no guarantee that you’ll be able to restart the story and other missions afresh with your level, skills and XP earned thus far remaining intact.

If you can’t stop playing Bethesda’s massive space RPG, you’ll be glad to hear that it does indeed have a New Game Plus mode.

Read on to find out everything there is to know about the Starfield New Game Plus mode, what you can do after you complete the game’s story, and what differences there are in New Game Plus.

Read more on Starfield:

Does Starfield have New Game Plus?

Yes, there is a Starfield New Game Plus mode! It isn’t called New Game Plus, but it is there and available to play through once you have completed the main missions and finished the story.

Complete these and you’ll be given a choice upon the conclusion of the final mission in the form of a shiny orb – walk away from it and carry on in this universe (with everything you’ve earned up to that point remaining) or walk inside of it and begin again in a new universe.

If you opt to begin a New Game Plus run, you will carry over all your traits, skills, powers and the Frontier.

You will lose everything else, including items such as digipicks, though, as the game essentially restarts – but you will be able to skip the entirety of the main quest on your second play through.

Starfield New Game Plus differences: What can you do after the ending in Starfield?

After completing Starfield’s story and seeing its ending, you can choose to carry on from that point or enter another universe to begin again with a number of bonuses and differences in a New Game Plus mode.

Choose to carry on and you can discover everything else you have yet to see, be that side quests, new locations or whatever else – it’ll all be there waiting for you upon completing the story.

Go down the New Game Plus route, however, and you can begin again with your current level, traits, skills, powers and Frontier intact. You will lose everything else, however, but gain a selection of cool new things.

Here’s what you get in Starfield New Game Plus:

  • Starborn Guardian ship – a great free ship
  • Starborn Spacesuit Astra (full outfit)
    • Looks like you get more new Starborn spacesuits each time you complete a New Game Plus and head into another one
  • New artifacts
  • New temples
  • New powers

There is no level cap in the game, so you can keep going if you like to discover all of the hidden powers and artifacts. You will need to play through at least one New Game Plus to see it all.

In terms of Starfield New Game Plus differences, things get a little complicated. Spoilers follow, of course.

You can keep going through multiple New Game Plus runs in Starfield. Each time you do, you will get new rewards and changes to quests. The main changes appear to take place in the early stages of the game’s story but there are dialogue changes that happen throughout.

Think of each New Game Plus run as going into a new alternate universe. In one run the Constellation crew at the Lodge might all be normal, in another they will have been replaced with children, all killed by the Hunter (apart from Vasco), and more, including a Lodge full of different versions of your own character. It can get pretty wild.

The new Starborn dialogue option will alter the story and allow you to skip the majority of its missions, even unlocking a brand-new story mission: ‘Among the Stars’. You’ll also be able to avoid a companion being killed in ‘High Price to Pay‘.